Knossos (modern History)
Knossos ( grc-gre, Κνωσός, ''Knōsós'', ), also romanized Cnossus, Gnossus, and Knossus, is the main Bronze Age archaeological site at Heraklion, a modern port city on the north central coast of Crete. The site was excavated and the palace complex found there partially restored under the direction of Arthur Evans in the earliest years of the 20th century. The palace complex is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete. It was undoubtedly the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. Quite apart from its value as the center of the ancient Minoan civilization, Knossos has a place in modern history as well. It witnessed the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the enosis, or "unification," of Crete with Greece. It has been a center of Aegean art and archaeology even before its initial excavation. Currently a branch of the British School at Athens is located on its grounds. The mansion Evans had built on its grounds, Villa Ariadne, for the use o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crete Integrated Map-en
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete rests about south of the Greek mainland, and about southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete (or North Cretan Sea) to the north and the Libyan Sea (or South Cretan Sea) to the south. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete ( el, Περιφέρεια Κρήτης, links=no), which is the southernmost of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most populous of Greece's regions. Its capital and largest city is Heraklion, on the north shore of the island. , the region had a population of 636,504. The Dodecanese are located to the nort ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Archaeological Site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record. Sites may range from those with few or no remains visible above ground, to buildings and other structures still in use. Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a "site" can vary widely, depending on the period studied and the theoretical approach of the archaeologist. Geographical extent It is almost invariably difficult to delimit a site. It is sometimes taken to indicate a settlement of some sort although the archaeologist must also define the limits of human activity around the settlement. Any episode of deposition such as a hoard or burial can form a site as well. Development-led archaeology undertaken as cultural resources management has the disadvantage (or the ben ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel. The present building was built between 1841 and 1845. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment, and in November 2011, new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were unveiled. In May 2016, the museum also opened redisplayed galleries of 19th-century art. History Broad Street The museum opened on 24 May 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The building on Broad Street (later known as the Old Ashmolean) is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. Elias Ashmole had acquired the collection from the gardeners, travellers, and collectors Joh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Double Axe
''Labrys'' ( gr, , lábrus) is, according to Plutarch (''Quaestiones Graecae'' 2.302a), the Lydian word for the double-bitted axe. In Greek it was called (''pélekus''). The Ancient Greek plural of ''labrys'' is ''labryes'' (). Etymology Plutarch relates that the word was a Lydian word for 'axe': . Many scholars including Evans assert that the word ''labyrinth'' is derived from ''labrys'' and thus, would imply 'house of the double axe'. A priestly corporation in Delphi was named ''Labyades''; the original name was probably ''Labryades'', servants of the double axe. In Roman times at Patrai and Messene, a goddess Laphria was worshipped, commonly identified with Artemis. Her name was said to be derived from the region around Delphi. In Crete the "double axe" is not a weapon, however, and it always accompanies women, not a male god. Beekes regards the relation of ''labyrinth'' with ''labrys'' as speculative, and rather proposes a relation with (), 'narrow street', or to t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Firman
A firman ( fa, , translit=farmân; ), at the constitutional level, was a royal mandate or decree issued by a sovereign in an Islamic state. During various periods they were collected and applied as traditional bodies of law. The word firman comes from Persian meaning "decree" or "order". On a more practical level, a firman was, and may still be, any written permission granted by the appropriate Islamic official at any level of government. Westerners are perhaps most familiar with the permission to travel in a country, which typically could be purchased beforehand, or the permission to conduct scholarly investigation in the country, such as archaeological excavation. Firmans may or may not be combined with various sorts of passports. Etymology Farmān (also spelled firman) is the modern Persian form of the word and derives from Middle Persian (Pahlavi) ''framān'', ultimately from Old Persian ''framānā'' (''fra'' = "fore", Greek πρό). The difference between the modern Pe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William James Stillman
William James Stillman (June 1, 1828July 6, 1901) was an American journalist, diplomat, author, historian, and photographer. Educated as an artist, Stillman subsequently converted to the profession of journalism, working primarily as a war correspondent in Crete and the Balkans, where he served as his own photographer. For a time, he also served as United States consul in Rome, and afterward in Crete during the Cretan insurrections. He helped to train the young Arthur Evans as a war correspondent in the Balkans, and remained a lifelong friend and confidant of Evans. Later in life, he seriously considered taking over the excavation at Knossos from Minos Kalokairinos, who had been stopped from further excavation by the Cretan Assembly; he was, however, prevented from pursuing that goal further by a failure to obtain a firman, or permission to excavate. Stillman wrote several books, one of which, his ''Autobiography of a Journalist'', suggests that he viewed himself primarily as a wr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pithos
Pithos (, grc-gre, πίθος, plural: ' ) is the Greek name of a large storage container. The term in English is applied to such containers used among the civilizations that bordered the Mediterranean Sea in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the succeeding Iron Age. Pithoi were used for bulk storage, primarily for fluids and grains; they were comparable to the drums, barrels and casks of recent times. The name was different in other languages; for instance, the Hittites used ''harsi-''. Secondarily, discarded pithoi found other uses. Like the ceramic bathtubs of some periods, the size of a pithos made it a convenient coffin. In Middle Helladic burials in Mycenae and Crete, sometimes the bones of the interred were placed in pithoi. The ancient Iberian culture of El Argar used pithoi for coffins in its B phase (1500–1300 BC). The external shape and materials were approximately the same: a ceramic jar about as high as a man, a base for standing, sides nearly straight or gene ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kephala
Kephala is a hill landform in northern Crete, Greece. This location was chosen by ancient settlers for the site of the Palace of Knossos; the footprint of the Neolithic settlement at Kephala Hill was actually larger than the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos.C. Michael Hogan''Knossos fieldnotes'', Modern Antiquarian (2007)/ref> See also *Minoan civilization The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450BC ... References Neolithic settlements in Crete Hills of Greece Landforms of Crete Landforms of Heraklion (regional unit) Knossos {{Crete-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pasha
Pasha, Pacha or Paşa ( ota, پاشا; tr, paşa; sq, Pashë; ar, باشا), in older works sometimes anglicized as bashaw, was a higher rank in the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman political and military system, typically granted to governors, generals, dignitary, dignitaries, and others. As an honorific, honorary title, ''Pasha'', in one of its various ranks, is similar to a British Peerage of the United Kingdom, peerage or knighthood, and was also one of the highest titles in the 20th-century Kingdom of Egypt. The title was also used in Morocco in the 20th century, where it denoted a regional official or governor of a district. Etymology The English word "pasha" comes from Turkish language, Turkish ('; also ()). The Oxford Dictionaries (website), Oxford Dictionaries attributes the origin of the English borrowing to the mid-17th century. The etymology of the Turkish word itself has been a matter of debate. Contrary to titles like emir (''amīr'') and bey (''beg''), which were es ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dragoman
A dragoman or Interpretation was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish-, Arabic-, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A dragoman had to have a knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages. In the Ottoman Empire, Dragomans were mainly members of the Ottoman Greek community, which possessed considerable multilingual skills, because substantial Greek trading communities did business in the worlds of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. To a lesser extent, other communities with international commercial links, notably the Armenians, were recruited. Etymology and variants In Arabic the word is ترجمان (''tarjumān''), in Turkish ''tercüman''. Deriving from the Semitic quadriliteral root ''t-r-g-m'', it appears in Akkadian as "targumannu," in Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) as ትርጓም (''t-r- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Heinrich Schliemann
Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (; 6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German businessman and pioneer in the field of archaeology. He was an advocate of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer's ''Iliad'' reflects historical events. Schliemann's excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level that is believed to be the historical Troy. Early life and education Schliemann was born January 6, 1822 in Neubukow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin (part of the German Confederation) to Luise Therese Sophie Schliemann and Ernst Schliemann, a Lutheran minister where today a museum called the "Heinrich Schliemann-Gedenkstätteis placed. He was the fifth of nine children. The family moved to Ankersh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifacts, History of archaeology, archaeological and historic Archaeological site, sites, or historic archives and manuscripts. The essence of antiquarianism is a focus on the empirical evidence of the past, and is perhaps best encapsulated in the motto adopted by the 18th-century antiquary Sir Richard Hoare, 2nd Baronet, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts, not theory." The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' first cites "archaeologist" from 1824; this soon took over as the usual term for one major branch of antiquarian activity. "Archaeology", from 1607 onwards, initially meant what is now seen as "ancient history" generally, with the narrower modern sense first seen in 1837. Today the term "antiquarian" is often used in a pejorative sense ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |